Editorial

Improving the Quality of Interventional RadiologyLiteratureAlbert A. Nemcek, Jr, MD,

Editor-in-Chief

J Vasc Interv Radiol 2009; 20:1269

THE lead article in this month’s issueis one that I believe deserves to behighlighted (1). It is a study performedby one of our editorial board mem-bers, Dr. James B. Spies, along with hiscolleagues at Georgetown UniversityMedical Center. In this study, the au-thors attempted to judge the quality ofpublications in two major interven-tional radiology subspecialty journals,CardioVascular and Interventional Radi-ology (CVIR) and the Journal of Vascularand Interventional Radiology (JVIR).

In making this assessment, the au-thors used criteria developed and re-fined by the Consolidated Standardsof Reporting Trials (CONSORT) group(2). I would note, before continuing,that the Web site itself asks authors toreference original published journalarticles of the CONSORT statement(eg, Altman et al [3]) rather than theWeb site, as the authors of this reporthave done. I have taken the liberty ofproviding a reference to the Web site(2) only to make readers aware of itsexistence.

For those unfamiliar, the CONSORTcriteria were developed in the early 1990sby a group of medical editors, clinical trialexperts, epidemiologists, and methodolo-gists with the goal of improving the qual-ity of published reports of randomizedclinical trials. Specifically, the aim was tohelp minimize the chance that inadequatereporting of various aspects of such trials

The author has not identified a conflict of interest.

© SIR, 2009

DOI: 10.1016/j.jvir.2009.08.006

might lead to biased estimates of the ben-efits of the intervention under investiga-tion. The current CONSORT criteriaconsist of a 22-item checklist that per-tains to the various sections of a reportof a clinical trial (ie, Title, Abstract, In-troduction, Materials and Methods, Re-sults, Discussion). The checklist pro-vides a standardized, evidence-basedmethod for complete and transparentreporting of trial design and interpreta-tion. In this manner the readers aremuch better equipped to critically assessthe validity and applicability of the con-clusions of the study. The CONSORTcriteria have been adopted by manyleading medical journals as a templatefor reporting randomized clinical trials.

Drs. Meyers and Spies and theircolleagues (1) used the criteria in adifferent manner, by assigning a qual-ity score to published interventionalradiology articles based on the degreeto which the manuscript was compli-ant with the CONSORT checklist. Al-though the checklist is intended to beapplied only to randomized clinical tri-als, the authors recognized that many ofthe items were also applicable to non-randomized trials. Thus, even thoughone would not expect, for example, aretrospective case series to adhere fullyto the checklist, it is still reasonable toconsider such a series as being of “betterquality” if it followed the checklist to thehighest degree possible.

Although I would encourage JVIRsubscribers to read this well writtenarticle in depth, the fundamental mes-sage is that there are significant defi-ciencies in published interventional

radiology studies that potentially limit

our ability to assess the validity oftheir conclusions. This result is, per-haps, not too surprising to those whoread and review this literature criti-cally. Our literature in this regard isnot different from the literature ofmany other specialties, as pointed outin the Discussion section of this Spe-cial Communication.

Even if not a surprise, though, thearticle represents, to me (and to Dr.Spies, to whom I have spoken at lengthabout this topic), a chance to further im-prove our literature. To this end, wehave decided to formally endorse theCONSORT statement in our Instruc-tions to Authors. Initially, we propose aperiod during which clinical investiga-tors are encouraged to familiarize them-selves with the criteria, to voluntarilyfollow these guidelines when reportingrandomized clinical trials, and to followthem as closely as is possible for non-randomized trials. I look forward to theday when this interesting study can berepeated with far more praiseworthy re-sults for our subspecialty.

References1. Meyer J, Nsouli-Maktabi H, Spies JB.

Quality of interventional radiology lit-erature: a review of articles published inJVIR and CVIR. J Vasc Interv Radiol 2009;20:1271–1276.

2. CONSORT Group. CONSORT State-ment. Available at http://www.consort-statement.org/home/. Accessed August3, 2009.

3. Altman DG, Schulz KF, Moher D, et al.The revised CONSORT statement for re-porting randomized trials: explanationand elaboration. Ann Intern Med 2001;

134:663–694.

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